Expectations high for Unitree Robotics IPO
Expectations are running high for Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics' debut on Shanghai's STAR market on Wednesday, after its record-breaking IPO was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors, with some institutions predicting a potentially explosive first-day jump.
Industry experts said that Unitree's IPO has become more than a company-specific event. It would be a defining moment for China's fast-growing humanoid robot industry, while setting a key valuation benchmark for global investors on the sector, they said.
Investors were already placing their bets on Tuesday. Despite the broader market being under pressure, a group of humanoid robot-related stocks jumped in early trading. Swancor, a leading new materials manufacturer that expanded into humanoid robots, closed at 188.97 yuan ($28.03), up about 10.26 percent, while Leaderdrive, a precision robotic component maker, edged up about 5 percent to 380.8 yuan.
For the latest IPO, Unitree sold about 40.45 million shares at 150.80 yuan apiece, raising roughly 6.1 billion yuan. Retail demand exceeded the shares available by more than 8,000 times, a record for Shanghai's tech-focused STAR Market.
Contracts linked to Unitree's IPO were trading in the over-the-counter market at around 540 yuan per share ahead of the listing, more than three times the IPO price. At that level, a retail investor receiving a standard winning allocation in the A-share offering could be sitting on a paper gain approaching 200,000 yuan.
"Unitree's IPO would be a defining moment for the humanoid robot sector," Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said. "For years, investment in the sector has been driven by competing technology roadmaps and expectations of long-term growth. The IPO will allow investors to compare robot makers more directly on their technology, product maturity, commercialization, and path to profitability."
"As the first humanoid robot company to list on China's A-share market, Unitree established a valuation anchor for the humanoid robot sector both for China and the world, gradually shifting the sector from thematic investment towards industrial pricing," he said.
The IPO offer also values Unitree at about 60.99 billion yuan and represents 35.89 times its 2025 sales and 219.23 times its earnings, far above an average price-to-earnings ratio of about 38.56 times for China's general equipment manufacturing sector.
"Unitree's offer price and estimated valuation were far above previous market expectations and could help reshape how investors value humanoid robot manufacturers," Xu Guangtan, chief machinery analyst at China Securities, said.
"Chinese companies are simultaneously strengthening robots' AI "brains", motion-control cerebellums, and physical bodies while pushing into industrial and commercial applications," Xu said.
On Monday, Unitree unveiled another high-speed robot capable of running at up to 12.66 meters per second and jumping two meters from a standing position. The company said it had produced and delivered about 18,000 bipedal humanoid robots across different models by the end of July.
"Whether Unitree can grow into that valuation will depend heavily on whether orders from factories and other industrial customers begin to scale," Tian Lihui, a finance professor at Nankai University, said.
Just a day before Unitree's debut, Pinzhun Laser, a Chinese laser maker, also made its STAR market debut and surged more than 500 percent in early trading. At its intraday peak, an investor who secured one standard IPO allocation could have been sitting on gains of more than 550,000 yuan.
"The arrival of a group of hard-tech companies — including memory-chip maker ChangXin Memory Technologies and Unitree — on public markets also pointed to a broader change in how Chinese investors value technology companies," Tian said. "Greater weight has been placed on technological barriers, domestic substitution, and future commercial potential rather than current earnings alone."
